Found via BoingBoing, 80 Blocks From Tiffany’s (here in 8 parts on YouTube) is an interesting late-70’s doc on street gangs in New York (primarily the Savage Skulls and the Savage Nomads). Here’s the Amazon entry for the VHS tape, which mentions The Education of Sonny Carson - I’ll have to check that out when I get Netflix again. That last link has a lot of YouTube clips from Sonny Carson and other actual gang footage from the 70s.
Here’s an article on freakonomics.com featuring Q & A with Sudhir Venkatesh, the then-grad student written about in Freakonomics who is now a professor of sociology at Columbia.
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Street Gangs But Didn’t Know Who To Ask
Venkatesh will publish a book, Gang Leader for a Day, in early 2008.
(Note: the above contains two sentences directly cut and pasted from the linked article. If anyone has a problem with that let me know.)
Ahh, YouTube always has something better than what’s on the actual TV. Other Video sites too!
